Page 48 of The Lover’s Eye

The next several days were punctuated by swaths of boredom, awkwardness, and pain. After Isobel’s outburst in the morning room, which had received no verbal response from anyone present, she and Giles had not discussed what happened.

Dr. Dunn was brought in to examine Isobel’s burns, and Betsey had worked tirelessly to collect all the ingredients for his recommended poultice, keeping a hearty supply on hand at all times.

Isobel often insisted on medicating the wound herself due to its delicate location, but Giles had wanted to do it for her on several occasions.

That was the closest they had come since the ladies luncheon fiasco, since her gutting question.

“It is looking somewhat improved,” Giles said, examining her leg closely.

“I think I’m fully recovered,” Isobel said, diverting her eyes when their gaze met. She was ashamed of herself, yes, but she was also angry. Perhaps if he would just address that day, acknowledge the ladies’ peppered allusions to Aurelia …

But no. Isobel’s insecurities were left to fester, and the promise she had made to him grew heavier with each passing hour.

“Do not be so hasty,” he said, bending her leg toward the window’s light to examine the baby thin skin of healing. “I still think you should stay abed.”

“Dr. Dunn said one week,” she said firmly. “It has been eight days. The swelling has gone down, the blisters are no more, and I am going mad staying in bed.”

Giles eased her leg back down to the mattress. A muscle in his jaw jumped with irritation. “Isobel, I am telling you it is not wise to resume your walks yet.”

“Will you truly argue with me over a leg, but not address what happened here during the luncheon?”

“I will return when you are in a better humor,” Giles said in a low voice, standing from his seat on the bed and heading toward the door.

Without caution, Isobel threw her legs off the bed and stood. She did so too rapidly, placing equal weight on both feet, and felt the fiery throb flare in her thigh. She winced but quickly righted herself.

“Really, Isobel?” Giles turned back and reached her in a few long strides. He put steadying hands on her arms.

“I cannot do it anymore, Giles!”

He sighed. “Fine. I will send for Dr. Dunn, and if he deems you well enough to resume your walks—”

“ No .” Her grey eyes locked with his, her bottom lip trembling. “I cannot keep this promise any longer. It is destroying me, and worse than that it is—it is keeping us apart.”

A shadow fell over his features, turning his protective irritation into something stony and unsympathetic. “No, Isobel. You are keeping us apart. Can you not see that?”

“ Me ?” She gave a wild, unbridled laugh. “That’s a bit rich coming from the man who swore off an entire bloody part of himself! Keeping us apart? Do secrets not count?”

Isobel’s chest heaved. His expression was unreadable, his hold on her steadfast. “You allowed me to make a cake of myself, Giles. You knew—you had to have known—that her luncheon was the same tea service, same guests, same hall—”

“I tell you truthfully I did not know,” he said firmly, each syllable a bite. “I did not pay attention to what she did here.”

“And all those remarks …” Isobel plopped down on the edge of the bed, the sweltering sting of tears threatening to uproot her fury. “They talked of your pet name for her, of all these intimacies you shared with her—I—what does it all mean, Giles?”

His features suffused with the rising blood of anger. “I do not know what nonsense she might have spoken, or how they might’ve embellished upon it. Truly, nothing would surprise me.”

“Hearing them offer you their condolences made me sick,” she continued bitterly, her hands digging into the linen sheet.

“As if I am some Bird of Paradise who stole you from her. And, damn it ”—she squeezed her eyes shut, emotion slipping into her voice—“sometimes I feel like it’s all true. I’m your wife, and yet …”

Giles crouched and took Isobel’s hands in his own. “You and I know that is not true. I’ve hardly been seen for months. They felt it must be addressed out of politeness. Perhaps I should have better prepared you for that, but all the rest is common wag. You mustn’t let it bother you.”

Isobel’s heart beat with such fervor it was uncomfortable, radiating out into her limbs and maximizing the discomfort in her leg. Giles bent his head to kiss her hands gently, one by one.

She wanted to leave it here. To settle into the feel of his lips on her skin and be like Marriane and feign the perfect pretender. But she couldn’t.

“I must know,” she said, her mouth dry as cotton. “Was Aurelia expecting your child? Were you truly so in love that you cannot bear to trust me with the truth of it?”

She hated the way the name tasted on her lips, hated herself for speaking it to him. It spent all its time in her head, where it had grown to be a common curiosity. It felt dangerous now that she had spoken it.

All the hot color seemed to bleed out from Giles’s face, his throat convulsing in a swallow. “Isobel, no —whatever gave you such an idea?”

“It would make so much sense,” she said, her hands trembling in his. “All I ever hear is how much you adored her, of how perfect she was. Oh, Giles, would you have even looked at me had she not gone missing? Would you not have dismissed me as some useless country chit like all the rest of them?”

Isobel’s hands fell then. She did not realize how dependently they had been resting in his.

Giles rose to full height, his face wiped of all readable expression. “I do not wish to speak with you,” he said coldly. “Not for as long as you put your stock into idle gossip, rather than the man standing here before you.”

?

Isobel regretted her words before the door even closed behind him. As she had watched his stiff back receding from her, she had wanted to call out to him. Reach for him, apologize, something— anything.

It was as if a mist had cleared from her mind, and she saw for the first time his pain rather than her own. Her jealous outburst was forced to the background; the breadth of her guilt overwhelming everything.

He had tried to speak to her in a rational mind. It was she who had deployed her darkest fears and sharpest tongue, who had wielded her pain unfairly against him. The conversation needed to be had, but not like that.

Isobel had replayed the scene tirelessly in her head in the two days since it had happened.

It only multiplied her guilt and confusion, and she was relieved when Dr. Dunn gave her a clean bill of health to resume her walks.

The curmudgeonly old physician had not yet made it out the front doors of Cambo House before Isobel started dressing.

With Betsey’s aid, she placed some wrapping around the tender burnt flesh, and tied the garter loosely about her stocking, only tight enough to keep it in place.

“I would like my half boots, instead,” Isobel said when Betsey approached her with a pair of slippers.

“Are you going walking so soon, milady?” Betsey asked, hesitating.

“It has been ten days,” Isobel said sharply. “It is not soon.”

As the lady’s maid scurried back to fetch her half boots, Isobel’s guilt prickled again. She didn’t know why she had been so out of temper with everyone, snapping and scolding in a way that was entirely out of character for her. She only hoped a return to normal activities would ease her mind.

Isobel descended the stairs for the first time since the ladies luncheon. Cambo House had settled back into her own again, auspiciously quiet and feigning abandonment. But upon reaching the entry hall, she saw the cracked library door and heard the faint rustle of paper.

Her heart pulled toward it. Going two days without speaking to Giles had been crushing. Every time she heard him moving about his chamber, close enough she could have touched him had a wall not been in the way, she felt this same intuitive magnetism. If she could find the words to apologize …

She moved toward the library in slow steps, as if each stride was a building block to her courage. She had nearly reached it, her fingers knitting together in anxious anticipation, when a knubby hand reached up and closed the door from the outside.

Isobel jumped. She hadn’t even heard Mr. Finch approach. He stood beside her now, his palm still flattened against the door to bar her entry. “His lordship is not to be disturbed,” he said in a low drawl. “He requested that no one enter for the entirety of the day.”

Isobel had never stood so close to the butler before. His eyes were so dark. A seamless connection between iris and pupil, their obsidian flatness only made starker by the surrounding white of his hair. It was difficult to look at him.

“I am actually pleased to see you,” she said, forcing her eyes to remain fixed on his. “I wanted to ask what damage has been caused to the teapot, and also offer my apologies for what occurred.”

“It was shattered, my lady,” Mr. Finch said in a flat rasp.

Isobel swallowed. “Surely there is someone in Newcastle who repairs porcelain pieces? I am sure Giles would only be too pleased to send it off for restoration.”

A slow, condescending smile worked up the butler’s lips, not reaching any other facet of his expression. “No one can repair such finery. Lady Trevelyan’s mother gifted it to her. Did you know that?”

“No,” Isobel said, her eyelids attempting to flutter shut to escape his gaze.

“Did you know it was honey gilded, with every design tooled by a practiced hand?”

Giles’s voice interrupted from the other side of the door. “Finch,” he called gruffly. “Come here.”

The elderly butler shuffled back a step, giving an infinitesimal bow as Isobel turned on her heel and made for the door.

She didn’t look back as the library door opened.

She didn’t want to catch a glimpse of her husband; just listening to his familiar voice was heart-clenching enough.

She hadn’t realized she’d been aching to hear it.